For the past 11 years I’ve been an active part of the White Sox Interactive community. The overwhelming majority of the time I have enjoyed it a lot. I’ve gotten to know some good Sox fans and better people…Brian 26, Torn Labrum, Daver, JB, Foulke You and Tragg immediately come to mind. (If I’ve forgotten anyone I apologize!)

But things change and effective today I have begun writing for the Chicago Baseball Museum, these are the same people who brought me to Chicago last year to co-host the 40th anniversary celebration for the 1972 White Sox. Doctor David Fletcher is the man in charge. Among the other writers whom I’ll be working with are George Castle, who wrote for many years for the mainstream Chicago media and now covers sports for a paper in N.W. Indiana and Paul Ladewski who wrote for a long time at the Daily Southtown. (Just in case anybody is wondering, no I’m not getting paid. I write because the Sox have been one of my passions since I was five years old in 1960. What can I say...I love the White Sox.)

But what about the Sox fans here at WSI?

Thankfully, the mods are going to allow me to post the links to the stories as they appear at the Chicago Baseball Museum website. That way fans can read them (or not…) at their choosing. I appreciate the mods doing me this courtesy. There should be a new story every one to two weeks.

The link included in this note of explanation is from part #1 of my four part series taking a closer look at the White Sox of the 1980’s. This part gives an overview of the franchise and takes a look at the 1981 and 1982 seasons. Part 2, looks at the Western Division championship year of 1983 and 1985. Part 3 examines the Sox G.M.’s in that period…Roland Hemond, Hawk Harrelson and Larry Himes and the final part examines the single biggest issue of the decade…would the Sox move?

At this point we don’t have the capability of including audio links from my library as we were able to do here at WSI but I’m told that is coming.

If at any time, readers have comments, questions, story ideas or just want to talk, they can reach me at mliptak1@msn.com I’ll absolutely respond. Might even give you a call!

I’ll still look over WSI and the message boards from time to time to see what’s going on…might even get a good story idea or two… and who knows it’s possible things change again and I can write again for the site in the future. We’ll just have to wait and see.

But for now, thanks so much gang for everything. It’s been a hell of a ride.

Congrats Lip! Always enjoy your Sox history stories so I will definitely check out your new home. Just curious, does the new gig not allow you to post here anymore as a fan?

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The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done." -George Carlin

You write a story about how the Sox went from worse to first without using the word "again."

The backstory to this is a ski trip I took to Alta, Utah in February, 2005. The day after the Super Bowl, I was in line to get lunch on the mountain when I saw a guy wearing a Red Sox hat near me. I congratulated him on the Patriots' victory the night before and commented that they had some good sports mojo in Boston. He agreed. I then told him that the headlines that coming Octobe will say "Sox win the World Series, but won't say 'again'." He looked at me confused (I was wearing a White Sox hat, by the way) and then smiled.

Wish I could have seen his face on October 26th that year.....

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Things that make you go "Hmmmmm:" Aaron Rowand and Kris Bryant have never been seen in the same room at the same time.
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Good luck in the new gig, Lip! And thanks from me for the history and insights you've brought to the board. Your history with the White Sox parallels mine, and I'm grateful for the interviews and stories about the teams we grew up with.

Don't be a stranger. It's good for us to feel like we know a guy on the inside!

The articles, interviews, audio files and inside info is what made this site special. Message boards are nice but the above made this site as popular as it was. I really hope something can be done so this site can be as it once was. Losing Lip is a huge loss.